1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to electronic mail messages, and more particularly to a computer implemented method, computer program product and a system for managing electronic mail messages within an email system.
2. Background of the Related Art
Currently, email clients such as MICROSOFT OUTLOOK and LOTUS NOTES enable a user to exchange electronic messages with other users through networked email servers. If a user wants to respond to a message, the user activates a “reply” command. In general, an email client responds to a “reply” command by creating a new message with the same subject line usually prefixed by some forwarding indication like “Fw:”, “Aw:”, “Re:” etc. Frequently, the reply email contains the original message in addition to the reply text. Often, the original message is not deleted and many email clients copy the content of the original message into the reply message.
Copying the content of the original message into the reply message causes multiple copies of the original message to be stored on the email server and on the client's computer. The parties may engage in an exchange based on the original email. Each new reply may contain the cumulative text of all the previous emails. As the prior emails may not be deleted, this results in wasted disk space on the client, the server, or both. Another result is performance degradation for mail replication, delivery and increased analysis effort due to complexity. Often, email servers block mails exceeding certain size limits The maintenance of redundant emails is time consuming for the receiver, because he needs to view and analyze each email in order to detect redundancies.